What is the most repetitive (and, hence, time-consuming) operation while modeling (professionally)?

I often find myself doing a lot of repetitive (dull) modeling work to get a model up to professional quality. I sometimes wondered whether such stuff could not be automated. Anyone else having use cases of grinding work that s/he wished that could be automated?

We spend quite a bit of time babysitting custom property values for our BOM.

We don't have PDM, and work with a mixture of the weldment, sheet metal, and purchased parts.

The SW "Cut List BOM" is not satisfactory or very easy to work with, but the regular BOM does not inherent the cut list information (why?).

So, we created a macro that will pull the cut list info and apply it to custom property fields, but if the part changes (and it usually does) we have to constantly re-run this macro to update the fields and BOM.

It would be really nice if SW would stop with this whole separate Cut List (that is hidden in an RMC menu) and just provide the part property info in such a way that is more simple for the user to choose what and how that info should show in the BOM.

For me it is the process of rolling back and stepping through the FeatureManager to fix broken features every time I make an edit. This happens on large feature lists for complex surfacing projects that change frequently.

We spend quite a bit of time babysitting custom property values for our BOM.

We don't have PDM, and work with a mixture of the weldment, sheet metal, and purchased parts.

The SW "Cut List BOM" is not satisfactory or very easy to work with, but the regular BOM does not inherent the cut list information (why?).

So, we created a macro that will pull the cut list info and apply it to custom property fields, but if the part changes (and it usually does) we have to constantly re-run this macro to update the fields and BOM.

It would be really nice if SW would stop with this whole separate Cut List (that is hidden in an RMC menu) and just provide the part property info in such a way that is more simple for the user to choose what and how that info should show in the BOM.

However, if we automate too much we'll be out of a job! lol, jk

I'd wager you could create a macro feature that would do that job for you automatically with every rebuild. Just add it to all your part templates.

It would be really nice if SW would stop with this whole separate Cut List (that is hidden in an RMC menu) and just provide the part property info in such a way that is more simple for the user to choose what and how that info should show in the BOM.

I was going to link to the Idea I posted about that issue, but I see you've already voted for it.

Here's the thing. Some of the work I've done has been a little chaotic. I started with a crazy organic shape, and then the customer starts making changes that weren't part of the original plan, so any sort of design for change system goes out the door. And then he would take a part like this and split it into multiple parts, all the while requiring multiple sizes. I'm talking about stuff like this image below, where I had internal shapes as well as external shapes, and then we had parts that mated to organic surfaces, and multiple sizes that had to fit standard parts... This is shown sectioned so you can see the internals of what I was up against.

I'm sure there was a way to make the design prettier, but you would have to invent it for this part. The problem was, once I finished modeling the parts, I wasn't going to go back and create a pretty parametric system. I have heard of people essentially doing "practice models" and then "production models". It's great if you've got time for that, but in this case I couldn't justify it.

Plus, there's the issue of SolidWorks just losing track of selections, particularly edge selections. To me, that was the biggest problem. If an edge moved this way or that way, it would change the number of edges on a corresponding split or trimmed part, and thus change the selections needed for a particular feature. With all of the Selection Manager selections, features failed constantly due to selections or directions flipping. We had tons of underdefined sketches because of splines. Moving around fully defined splines is a huge nightmare, and totally unnecessary (the full definition of the spline being the unnecessary part).

Or sometimes there is stuff based on 3D digital scans, and that has to be resized to fit 3 different scans, with similar patterns on all the sizes. You can't just use scaling to resize stuff, because they all have to fit standard hardware or other molded pieces. It's parts like these that don't really fit the systems are what made me so interested in systems to begin with.

It's easy to stick to a system when your parts all have sharp edges and straight lines, and sizes can be controlled with design tables, but this kind of work is messy, and the software acts like a completely different beast when working with this kind of stuff.

..yeah, well,.. when the topology rebuilds or the model/kernel tolerance is slightly modified due to a downstream child splitline/trim/knit/extend,.. and it effects parents which may have relative short edges/copy0offsets/trims/extends,... the whole pre-plan can sometimes become a seamstress pins/needles nightmare,.. rolling back into thimble mode.